Best Practice in Improving Data Quality in your CRM

innovent - October 22, 2015 - 0 comments

Your CRM has probably stored gigantic amounts of data. The question is, are all of those data really accurate? A lot of companies are simply gathering too much data without having any quality control procedures. Data integrity is an issue that affects 90 percent of businesses resulting in a major bottom line impact. Instead of adding problems to your big data, here are a few tips and best practices to improve your data quality in CRM records.

Deduplication of Data

A sure way to avoid bad data quality is data deduplication. There are a few automated systems that can scour your data to check for duplicate records, which may happen due to error in spelling, siloed data collection methods, or lacking of automated duplication checks. A few open source CRM systems such as SugarCRM can also be customized to achieve this. There are also 3rd party addons that can be installed on top of your existing CRM to have achieve functionality. Your staff will be more productive if they have all the information that they need.

Standardize Data Collected

Another way to stop data duplication at its source is through standardizing the data collection method. Ideally, the way sales and marketing collects information is based on the customer journey, such as starting out with an email address and moving up to a phone number when the customer is almost ready to make a purchase decision. You also want to standardize state and country abbreviations, number systems and other data that could easily lead to duplication. With standardized data, you prioritize the data collected to the most important, and avoid clogging your CRM with information that doesn’t do anything to improve your customer relationship.

Examine Data Collection Process

Are there issues with your data collection process that make it easy to introduce faulty data in the system? It’s easy to introduce duplicate records and other extraneous data if you have multiple applications using a central database that sync at different times. If you have CRM records going into your system from multiple sales and marketing staff who aren’t working with the most up-to-date version of records, you’re going to end up getting a lot of dirty data added to the system. Reducing channel conflict, especially when you’re using multiple tools, goes a long way toward cutting down on this faulty information

Run Data Quality Initiatives Frequently

Data quality control is not a “set it and forget it” process, as data degrades at the rate of 3 percent per month, according to Televox. Even something as simple as an address quickly falls out of date, as 20 to 30 percent of people move per year. Work your data quality initiatives on a regular basis, preferably alongside other preventative maintenance measures run within your organization.

Your CRM data is incredibly valuable to your company, but only if you take the time to maximize its quality. Bad data can work its way into your records through many sources, from a lack of standardization to extraneous data collected that doesn’t truly pertain to your sales and marketing process. You’ll save your sales and marketing department a lot of time and resources with clean data.

For all your SugarCRM needs contact InnoventCRM today on 1300 781 681 or info@innoventcrm.com.au. We help you to make “Every Connection Count” in your business!

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